Same as the day before, I awoke to a cold morning. At least this time I'd had the good sense to put on my wool cap before going to sleep, thus keeping my head warm. I had slept surprisingly well that night and wondered whether it was due to the exhaustion, or if Joe had snored less than usual. After the standard cold oatmeal breakfast we set out southward, this time with our full packs. The going was relatively flat which was just fine with me; my pack was at its heaviest right now, it would only get lighter as I used up the food I was carrying. With one of my Nalgenes filled my pack weight was around 35 lbs., give or take a few. Joe went on ahead and waited a few minutes for me at a clearing near a tiny gravel parking lot. We'd been going for about 90 minutes so we stopped to rest, but had to move in a few moments because of the swarms of blackflies. While I was putting my pack back on and tightening the straps, Joe said he couldn't take the flies anymore and had to go on. I left about half a minute later and continued along the easy-going trail. I came across a sign stating "Little Niagara Falls: 0.1 miles -->" and decided to make the 0.2 mile roundtrip to see it. It was interesting, but nothing inspirational or anything. Farther down I encountered another sign: "Big Niagra Falls: 0.1 miles -->". I took the trail to see if it really was "big", but as you can see, it really wasn't. I mean, it was "big" compared with the other falls, but not against the real thing.

    Walking on still, I came upon a makeshift wooden bridge to cross a lake's outlet. This was the third such bridge I'd encountered thus far, so I figured they were likely common in Maine, and at least around the 100-mile wilderness. I took a picture so people wouldn't think I was exaggerating when I told them how easy it'd be to fall off one of these things if you only sneezed. As I was putting my camera back into my pack I heard someone coming so I stepped aside. I had to do a double-take when I saw the hiker: it was Joe. My first question to him was "Wha? How? Huh?". I had fully expected him to be at least half a mile ahead of me. After all, I had taken 0.4 miles' worth of side trails and stopped three times to take pictures. Apparently he had taken a wrong turn just after leaving me and gone somewhere the trail wasn't. He asked if I had seen the two hikers who had been going through at an insane pace. I thought back and remembered crossing two guys with fishing rods headed in the other direction: one young, one old. Joe said no, that these guys were about our age and going south as well, and they passed him very quickly. I shook my head and told him I hadn't seen anyone else - they must've passed me when I was on one of the Niagara side-trails.

    The sometimes winding path eventually led us to Abol Bridge and the campground right next to it (where we planned to stay for the evening), 10.5 miles from where we had started in the morning. Due to the terrain we got there relatively early in the day - we'd been averaging 2.5 to 3 miles an hour. The poles were coming in handy, thought they occasionally caught things (mostly twigs). Joe had gotten a bit ahead of me again, so he was waiting at the picnic table near the convenience store. He motioned to some Pop Tarts and said that a northbound thru-hiker had left them for anyone who wanted 'em. Apparently this fellow was pushing on to do Katahdin tomorrow with his regular pack, not a day pack. He had told Joe that the next 50 miles were the worst, mosquito-wise, that he had encountered anywhere along the entire trail. Apparently this guy hadn't found it necessary to break out the DEET until this half of the 100-mile wilderness. I was both discouraged and encouraged by this news at the same time. I wasn't particularly looking forward the mosquito-infested bogs to come ahead, but if the other 50 miles weren't that bad it would serve as a goal outside of completing the entire 100 miles. Besides, I could hide in my tent in the evenings for the first half and then take in the shelters in the second half. We spoke with a girl there, apparently another hiker going north, and she confirmed the horrible bug population. She said that it was so bad at the East Branch shelter that she spent the entire night in the privy. That wasn't heartening news, but I chalked it up to her being off her rocker. Tunaberry arrived several minutes after I had plopped down. Tunaberry was a hiker whom we had briefly talked with earlier. He had a shelter next to ours that first night at Katahdin Stream Campground and we saw him on Katahdin the following day. Tuna was heading south and was doing the entire trail, but he wasn't starting here. He had done up to Pennsylvania and was pulling a flip-flop. Joe and Tuna got lunch at the store but I was damned if I would buy a meal while there was so much food sitting in my pack. While they feasted on hamburgers, hotdogs, chips, etc., I was satisfied enough with my PowerBar and peanut butter, knowing that I was lowering my pack weight bit by bit. I did break down and buy some sort of fruit-flavored drink since I was going to be refilling my water anyway.

    Soon enough other hikers were arriving, relaxing, and eating. Not long after that stories were being exchanged about the trail. Some folks related a story about a couple who were slack-packing the entire AT. They had done so by hiring a college student to follow them in a car with supplies. He picked them up in the evening and saw them off in the morning. Joe and I responded with our own story about ERTman. ERTman was a hiker we ran into on the first day of our shake-down hike near the Delaware Water Gap. He came up the trail with a dog bounding along after him. Being the eager-to-learn young hikers we were back then, we touched on the topic of pack weight with him. He told us he was carrying 26 lbs. total, including the boots on his feet (why he mentioned that, I don't know). After we blinked at him slightly in disbelief, he was prompted to explain that he had van support at the end of the day. Apparently this guy had his wife following his journey in their van to slack-pack him - I was impressed merely on the grounds that he had convinced her to do so. Someone else told of a doctor down south (Virginia or somewhere, I can't remember) that had an interesting policy: she treated thru-hikers for free. Joe and I related one last story, the one about the insane thru-hiking woman we encountered at the hostel near the Gap. She was carrying a THIRTEEN pound pack. The things she was doing in order to get to that weight bewildered us. First off, she didn't have a standard internal or external pack. She was using just a large sack and was using her ground cloth as frame support. She essentially had the cloth rolled up as one normally would, but let it loosen up naturally inside the sack to provide said support. Her tent was custom-designed to use her WALKING STICKS as the tent poles. Her sleeping bag was the ultra-light one pound type. The only light she had was one of those super-bright LEDs and her entire toolkit consisted of a can opener with knife. She spared no expense, weight-wise, in what she was carrying. Like I said, insane.

    One fellow asked me if I liked my pack. I told him I hadn't encountered any discomforts or anything either now or during the shake-down hike and that it had been serving me well. I especially liked that it let air reach my back as opposed to the internal frames I saw everyone sporting. He nodded, then motioned to his pack. He had the same one. He said he liked it as well, and I answered that I didn't quite understand why everyone else we'd seen had internal packs. His girlfriend said that she was told that she should get an external pack because females should have more weight closer to the hips rather than higher up on their backs. I figured that made sense, but I still didn't understand why all these other guys had internal packs.

    Since it was still early afternoon Joe suggested that we not stay at the campground. We knew that the first shelter into the 100-mile wilderness from this side, Hurd Brook, was only another three miles or so. I felt that, given the circumstances, it would be foolish to stay at the campground that night, so I agreed. I tried in vain to make a call home on my mobile phone - the signal strength just wasn't there. To make sure that I had no way of making contact with home, there weren't even any phones available at the campground or at the store. They claimed the phone lines stopped 10 miles outside of this town. Joe bought and sent out a postcard to his parents, figuring it'd get there in a few days. With that taken care of, we bid a temporary farewell to the hikers still situated at the table and set across the rickety structure known as Abol Bridge. On the other side the trail turned off the road and into the woods where we were greeted with a notice. With resolve temporarily bolstered to show this wilderness what I was made of, I began a countdown in my head of the number of miles left until we hit a town again. Now we were entering the real deal. Cue up armies of mosquitoes.

    About an hour and a half later we came upon the shelter. We were surprised that as more people came in, practically no one went into the shelter; everyone was setting up tents in the surrounding area instead. Even though the clouds were foreboding, the winds were picking up, and we were even told that it would rain that night, everyone seemed eager to hop into their soon-to-be-soaked tents to get away from the bugs. That was when we first saw one person who had a hammock as his sleeping quarters. It was completely encased in mosquito netting and had a tarp attached overhead. Apparently the whole thing weighed just over a pound. It was really a nice setup since he never had to worry about the bottom getting wet from the ground. All he needed were two trees and he was set - no worrying about flat ground to pitch on. Joe, Tunaberry and I sat in the shelter and ate our respective dinners. I tried to write in my journal but kept having to swat at mosquitoes after every other word, making it a very trying task. I really didn't want to set up a tent after the rain fiasco Joe and I encountered during our shake-down hike. Long story short, it had rained during the entire night back there in Jersey, which was fine since I had the rain fly on my tent and the rain cover on my pack. The part that wasn't fine was that it continued to rain nearly the rest of the following day. We couldn't hide out in tents/tarps and wait until it passed to pack everything up - we were forced to do it in the rain, getting everything wet in the process and rendering our various covers obsolete.

    Thundering nearby seemed to indicate that I should indeed stay in the shelter Then again, the bugs were beginning to get mightily annoying, prompting cries from people along the lines of "Christ! What the hell do they eat when we're not here?!". If only I could stay in the shelter and the protection of my tent without actually setting it up - 'Hey,' I figured, 'I can just hop in my sleeping bag and go into my tent without setting it up.' The tent would fall limply around me, but I'd still be inside the mosquito-proof netting. I tried it for a few minutes, but had to get rid of the tent. With the material sitting right on top of my face, it was very uncomfortable and warm. As I got out, it thundered again, prompting me to make a choice quickly. As I swatted the bugs away, I grabbed my tent and pitched it in the flattest space I could find remaining. Joe stayed in the shelter since he could put his bivy sack around his sleeping bag and be protected from the bugs. After I was done with my tent I found a tree to hang our bear bags from. Just as I was finishing up the final knot, the rain began. Since only two people were actually staying in the shelter, we had all put our gear there to ensure that it would at least be dry. I ran into my tent and amused myself for a while by watching mosquitoes land on the netting and thrust their pincers through. They'd take a few steps over and try again & again while I mocked them from within my impenetrable fortress.

    It wasn't even past 9:30'ish so I lay in there thinking about various topics while the rain pattered on my tent's fly. There was no way I would fall asleep for at least another 2-3 hours - I wasn't used to going to sleep at this hour, nor was I exhausted like when we climbed Mt. Katahdin. I realized there were two separate factors limiting how much I could walk at any given point: endurance and foot soreness. If I walked over 20 miles of flat terrain with a full pack, I probably wouldn't be fatigued, but my feet wouldn't be happy. Vice versa when doing, say, Katahdin. I also realized that I didn't appreciate people telling me about "bad things" to come, whether it was heavy climbs or swampy bogs or what-not. I could handle the trials and tribulations as they came, but I didn't want people telling me how miserable I'd be. I then thought back to the two guys in A Walk in the Woods who wimped out of the 100-mile wilderness. I was determined to make it through since everyone was telling me that, if I would have walked the entire trail north-to-south, the first two weeks would be the roughest. I would not back down - of course it was easy for me to say this since the trail had, thus far, been a cakewalk for me.

Underwear Pair #1 Discarded into Bag of Fallen, War-Hardened, Soiled Unmentionables

Squeaky Quail: Oh yeah, mmm, you like that, don't you? Yeah, blood, mmm!